Elements of Military Strategy: An Historical Approach

(Hardback)

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This book uses history in two ways: as the source of ideas about strategy and as examples to illustrate the elements by showing their application to specific campaigns and their utility in understanding the role of strategy in military operations. The focus is on American military campaigns from the American Indian Wars to the War in the Gulf. Those case studies are used to illustrate the strategy behind land, sea, and air campaigns. Over a fifth of the book examines the U.S. war against Japan because it furnishes such fine examples of independent and interdependent operations on land, on the sea, and in the air. The cases studied are not only intended to illustrate strategic ideas but also to show the utility of the author's distinctive approach to organizing military strategy. The book will appeal to military professionals, students of military science, and enthusiasts.

Reviews

"Not only is Elements of Military Strategy widely and deeply researched, but it is also very well written. It is a challenging approach to the subject and contains many original and, on the whole, convincing ideas that should stimulate the mind of any thinking student of military history and strategy."-Warren W. Hassler, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, Pennsylvania State University author of With Shield and Sword: American Military Affairs from Colonial Times to the Present
"This book is a good 'read' because of its originality of conceptualization, arresting statistics, and very good expositions of the constants of strategy, tactical systems and weaponry, and the strategy-tactics-armament ensemble."-Lee Kennett, former Lindbergh professor National Air and Space Museum author of The First Air War and A History of Strategic Bombing
"Jones' work will be of interest to all students of strategy in modern history. His greatest contribution is that he places logistics solidly in the front and center of the study of warfare and strategy, giving his vision of the history of war a depth and nunace rarely found....[A] significant and highly readable work from one of America's leading military historians."-Military and Naval History Journal
Jones' work will be of interest to all students of strategy in modern history. His greatest contribution is that he places logistics solidly in the front and center of the study of warfare and strategy, giving his vision of the history of war a depth and nunace rarely found....[A] significant and highly readable work from one of America's leading military historians.-Military and Naval History Journal

Author Bio

ARCHER JONES is Professor Emeritus of History and a former dean at North Dakota State University. He is the author of Confederate Strategy from Shiloh to Vicksburg (1961), The Art of War in the Western World (1987), and Civil War Command and Strategy (1992) and joint author of Politics of Command, Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy (1973), How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (1983), and Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986). He has served as Morrison Professor of History at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, member of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee, and trustee of the American Military Institute.